(Newser)
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Dmitri Krioukov is a physicist at UC San Diego, so when he got pulled over for failure to stop at a stop sign, he knew what to do: write a four-page paper explaining how his alleged offense was simply not possible according to the laws of physics. Krioukov's paper utilized his knowledge of angular and linear motion to explain that the officer didn't actually see what he thought he saw, NBC San Diego reports. The station doesn't go into the minutiae of the paper, but it worked: Krioukov got out of his $400 ticket.

"My argument in the court went as follows: that what he saw would be easily confused by the angle of speed of this hypothetical object that failed to stop at the stop sign. And therefore, what he saw did not properly reflect reality, which was completely different," explains Krioukov. Got all that?